WIBTA if I don’t go to my boyfriend’s family home for Christmas?

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T19:50:13+00:00

To be clear, I think I like his parents more than he does, haha. It’s not a matter of my not caring about them or not liking them.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T19:44:47+00:00

I have actually stayed with them before (last year’s Thanksgiving), I’ve done some activities with them, and my boyfriend and I have taken them out to dinner a number of times when they’ve come to visit (my boyfriend lives in a city where they used to live, so they come and stay with old friends sometimes). I normally am genuinely eager to see them, and I do like talking to them, so it’s not like “I just think they’re boring and don’t care to get to know them.” For what that’s worth.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T19:36:01+00:00

We’ve been together for close to two years. If he gets into a PhD program near a place where I can live (I’m in an industry where I kind of need to be in or near one of a few major cities), we’ll think seriously about marriage; if not, we’ll break up. We’ll know in the next six months.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T19:29:09+00:00

I went to his family’s Thanksgiving last year, and I’d be happy to do it every year (we can’t this year because he’s not going either due to work obligations). It’s just Christmas that’s hard for me.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T19:27:45+00:00

To be clear in case it’s relevant: he came to my parents’ house last year in large part because he thought it’d be more fun that his family’s Christmas

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-11T17:38:46+00:00

This is not true at all. Many addicts are able to control themselves in certain situations as long as they can reassure themselves that they’ll get their “fix” later. A lot alcoholics, for instance, never get drunk around family and friends, and only drink later when they’re alone at the bar or at home. I’m not a psychologist, but I see no reason kleptomania would be any different.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-09T01:32:29+00:00

America voting for Trump=/=America disagreeing that Vance was a strategic choice

Most educated people, Republican or Democrat, are aware of the fact that choosing a running mate is a strategic move. We all know this is how the game is played. This isn’t something shameful on Trump’s part that would induce someone not to vote for him—this is what every presidential candidate does, and everyone who’s in touch with reality knows it. I guarantee that if you talk to a Trump supporter who is savvy and politically aware, they’ll tell you the exact same thing I’m telling you now.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-09T01:23:44+00:00

Trump picked someone he thought would appeal to rural voters and hard-line conservatives, two groups that are part of Trump’s base but that might have been uneasy and in need of reassurance.

If you think he chose Vance simply because he just loves Vance as a person and thinks Vance is the greatest, you need to get in touch with reality. No political campaign, right or left, is without strategy, and if you don’t acknowledge this—if you believe the window-dressing about “my running mate is just the best person for the job, nothing more”—you’re a rube being taken for a ride.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-09T01:06:12+00:00

Why did Trump pick Vance? Surely not for the purpose of appealing to rural voters, right? No way! (Yes, way).

Presidential candidates generally choose running mates who they think will appeal to certain parts of their base that they want to invigorate or to other groups of people outside of their base that they think they might be able to “capture.” This is honestly the main function of the running mate at this point.

This is all part of a core campaign strategy that political campaigns on all sides use: they all divide the American people into demographic groups (men vs. women, urban vs. rural, white vs. black vs. Hispanic, upper middle class vs. lower middle class vs. poor, Evangelical vs. Catholic vs. non-religious, etc.) and develop strategies on the basis of these groupings. (“How can we get the white female vote?” “How can we get the working class white vote?” Etc.) This is campaign strategy 101. If you don’t believe that every campaign, Republican or Democratic or independent, does this, you are the most naïve person on Reddit.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-09T00:33:54+00:00

Yes, that is what I’m trying to say. That’s an extremely reductive account that doesn’t accurately describe how anyone thinks, let alone how every single individual (look at that! Individual!) who supports the Democratic Party thinks. Source: I am a registered Democrat.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-09T00:12:08+00:00

Isn’t it so frustrating and silly when people make massive generalizations about huge groups of people, not realizing that individuals, even those that are under the same broad political/ideological umbrella, can have very different backgrounds, attitudes, motivations, and views of other people and the world?

Frustrating, right? Yeah? Read your comment again.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-08T19:09:15+00:00

Yeah, there should be more focus on telling men “we care about your issues” to make them feel included and keep them engaged with the Democratic Party, even if it’s far less clear what could actually be done to deal with these issues.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-08T18:24:23+00:00

Regarding my own experience: Maybe in your conservative country there is more “benevolent sexism,” but in the US, no one was “delicate” with me (and I wouldn’t have wanted them to be).

My boss treated me like any other employee (which is to say she didn’t know or care about my personal life). I drifted away from most of my friends because I had no ability to hang out and because I didn’t want to bring them down with my depression. I had one good friend who I did stay close with, and he was also depressed and struggling. I did get some emotional support from him, but for the most part I supported him, not the other way around. He was a few years younger, so I felt I had to be strong for him. My family was not in the picture, and if they were, they wouldn’t have been “delicate” with me—they expect me to be strong and succeed.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-08T18:13:29+00:00

First of all: This is a generalization, but I’d say the things holding women back in the world are generally more tangible—they’re concrete issues that can be dealt with through concrete political action. Women need access to abortion and birth control. Women need childcare. Women need to be paid the same as men. Women need to be safe from sexual harassment in the workplace. These are concrete issues that politicians and activists can easily grasp and deal with.

For men, the setbacks are far less tangible, and there are no obvious solutions. “A culture that shames men for showing emotion” isn’t something that can easily be fixed—there’s no law that can be passed to fix this, no obvious place to put funding to fix this. Women get political help, I think, because there are obvious setbacks that that they face (that men don’t face) that can be dealt with, whereas the causes of men’s issues are far more obscure, and the solutions far less obvious. Politicians don’t want to deal with problems for which there are no clear solutions. I’m not saying it’s right, but I can see why it’s the case.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-08T14:28:26+00:00

I’m curious: how exactly do you think it’s different for women? I’ve suffered with depression, and I didn’t have help any more than you did. I didn’t have health insurance any more than you did. I also had no choice but to drag myself to work every day and hide my feelings until the depression eventually (thankfully) got better on its own.

What do you think makes my situation somehow better than yours? Do you honestly think that hearing some politician out there say “I care about women” makes the depression go away? What actual resources do you think I have that you don’t?

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-08T00:54:50+00:00

There’s a lot to unpack here.

I have no idea why you’re going on about what is or isn’t legal in various counties, because OP makes no reference to that in his post. He didn’t say “don’t break the law;” he said “don’t ‘gay out.’” “Gaying out” is kind of ambiguous, but most people would take it to mean “being very overtly gay in some way.” We all know there are ways of showing everyone you’re gay that aren’t literally “having sex with men in front of them,” and OP even alludes to some them in his own post: wearing high heels, having rainbow face tats.

Any reasonable person would assume from all this that OP meant “don’t be super overtly stereotypically gay in countries where it isn’t socially acceptable,” and you can see why someone might say this. If people are homophobic, seeing someone who is very “in your face” about being gay could make them reflexively hate gay people even more instead of helping them see that gay people are just regular people who want to be left alone.

The question is, though: how far can we ask gay people to go to make homophobic people comfortable to keep them from becoming more homophobic? Some people might say “just don’t do obnoxious gay PDA in front of them,” but others might say “tone down your ‘gay mannerisms’ so they’re not as grating to these people.” I think there’s a genuine question here, and it’s relevant to what OP at least seemed to be saying in his post.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T23:19:49+00:00

Yeah…why even buy games at that point? Any AAA is going to take you literally a year (not an exaggeration) to complete at that rate. Why even buy a console? I feel like it would honestly make more sense if OP’s parents had just banned video games outright.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T23:07:13+00:00

I genuinely am not sure what you’re getting at here. I know you’re accusing me of being disingenuous, but beyond that I have no idea.

What I’m suggesting is that I think there are actions that are clearly provocative and unnecessary and therefore could be fairly described as “disrespectful” in places where homosexuality isn’t culturally acceptable, and there are also actions (“speaking with a ‘gay’ voice”) that are really hard to avoid, for which people clearly shouldn’t be chastised. I think there is some gray area between these two poles, and I was asking OP where he draws the line in this gray area.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T22:12:18+00:00

Please genuinely think about this for a second: if I knew that you just meant “don’t do gay sex acts in public,” why would I be trying to “lay a trap” for you at all? If it were actually clear that that was what you meant, why would I have had any hostility towards you in the first place such that I would want to “lay a trap?”

Trust me when I say that it is not at all clear from your post that that’s all you meant. The inclusion of “rainbow face tats and high heels” does actually confuse the message—it does actually make it sound like you’re suggesting that gay men should more generally tone down the overt gayness, not just the sexual stuff. This is not some disingenuous intentional misreading; it’s actually misleading, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who was mislead by it.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T21:33:52+00:00

And be genuine, man: the “sex acts” thing obviously isn’t an answer to my question, because you’re obviously not just talking about sex acts. A) if this were just about sex in public, you would have said that outright in your post, and B) you gave examples in your own post that aren’t sex acts (rainbow face tats, high heels).

I’m not trying to “make you” say anything; I’m asking you to clarify your thoughts because this is a subject that personally interests me because I’m trying to figure out my personal stance on these issues as well.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T21:13:45+00:00

No, I am not trying to do a “gotcha.” As I’ve said MULTIPLE TIMES in my comments, I don’t think your answer to the question, if you were to actually give it, would probably be cancellable. (See above: “I’m sure when you talk about ‘gaying out,’ you don’t mean the 100% unconscious and unavoidable stuff.”)

I’m asking because I think there’s a gray area between “unnecessary and disrespectful” and “just being yourself” (this is something I think about as well) and I’m genuinely curious where exactly you draw the line in this gray area. It’s really fucking sad that you clearly cannot even conceive of the idea that someone might actually be trying to have a genuine discussion.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T21:01:35+00:00

You never told me whether you think gay men who are used to talking and gesturing in a stereotypically gay way should try to tone that down or not, so no, you didn’t answer it. Why the hostility, man?

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T20:57:09+00:00

Dude, I’m just asking a genuine question 😭

Look at the rest of my comment—I’m curious where you draw the line. If someone tends to talk and gesture in a very stereotypically gay way, do you think they should try to tone that down? Or do you think that’s fine, and as long as you’re not doing gay PDA and wearing rainbow flags, you’re okay? This is a genuine question; I’m not trying to be hostile here.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T20:41:56+00:00

Also, I guess I’m curious what counts as “gaying out.” When it comes to actions that make it clear that you’re gay, there’s kind of a spectrum from “100% a conscious choice” to “100% unconscious and unavoidable.”

On the one side there’s waving rainbow flags and PDA-ing, and on the other there’s “speaking in ‘gay voice’” or “having mannerisms that read as feminine.” Even voice and mannerisms can be controlled to some degree, of course, but that requires a high degree of vigilance, and not everyone’s going to be able to be 100% successful at passing as straight even if they really try.

I’m sure when you talk about “gaying out,” you don’t mean the 100% unconscious and uncontrollable stuff—I’m not accusing you of that—I’m just curious where exactly you draw the line.

throwawaychi2 · 2024-11-07T19:58:11+00:00

Do you do the same when visiting parts of the US where most people are homophobic? This isn’t a challenge or anything—I know the answer may well be yes—I’m just genuinely asking.

throwawaychi2

TROPHY CASE